Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/96

94 with France was detrimental to the kingdom....It was, indeed, more than time for England to interpose and save the almost expiring liberties of Europe, whilst at the same time she put some stop to an inundation of French wines, brandies, silks, linen, paper, salt, and an innumerable variety of frippery, millinery, and haberdashery wares, toys, &c.; which prohibition, and that of the wear of East India manufactures, brought the general balance greatly in our favour in the course of twenty years. The authors of this time say that, until after this prohibition, the annual exports of England, on an average, did not exceed three millions sterling; but that, in about twenty years after, the exports had gradually increased to near seven millions yearly, which vast increase was principally occasioned by the great increase and exportation of our own woollen, silk, linen, iron, and other manufactures, since the prohibition of commerce with France; and partly also to the prohibition, some years after enacted, of the wear in England of East India manufactures; and likewise in part to the enlarged demand from our own American colonies of all sorts of manufactures and necessaries." As Charles II. never again assembled a parliament after the 20th of March, 1681, the act prohibiting the importation of French merchandize remained in force till it was repealed in the beginning of the next reign by the act 1 Jac. II. c. 5. "Where-upon," says Anderson, "ensued an inundation of French commodities, to the value of about four millions sterling, within the compass of less than three years' time, whereby all the. evils formerly complained of were renewed, so that the nation would have been soon beggared, had it not been for the happy Revolution in the year 1688, when all commerce with France was effectually barred." The proof of a nation being on the road to beggary, which is derived from its purchasing every year between one and two millions' worth of commodities from another country, is not particularly convincing. But, as usual in cases of this kind, even the facts as to this matter appear to have been grossly misstated. Davenant, in his First Report to the Commissioners of Public Accounts, sensibly